MageQuit Early Access Review

MageQuit is one of those Early Access games adopting the name not to avoid criticism, but to be upfront with you about it being honestly in development. It has a very basic title screen, lacks descriptions for most things, has no tutorial, and requires a controller to play.

While it is rough around the edges and early in development, I think this 10 player part party game, part MOBA could eventually be worth taking a look at, just not right now.

Thanks to the lack of tutorials the first time my boyfriend and I started a match against each other (as this currently is local play only) we were instantly turned off as we thought you only have one move: a slow straight fireball. Turns out that after every round a new ability is unlocked, each of which is mapped to a different button on the controller. Abilities are selected from a few options one at a time, leaving your opponent to choose from the ones you didn’t select.

The abilities offered will be familiar to most League of Legends players as they include things like firey jumps, knockbacks, and stuns, all which play out about as you’d expect. The more original abilities — such as shooting out a rock that if it connects turns into a golem that chases your opponent — seem far less refined. These offensive moves are rather simple, which is probably a good thing considering you can have up to 10 players playing at a time.

“sometimes it is hard to tell just what the fuck is going on”

These offensive moves are rather simple, which is probably a good thing considering you can have up to 10 players playing at a time. Which leads me to another issue the current version of the game has: sometimes it is hard to tell just what the fuck is going on. There were multiple times where just with the two of us playing the screen was filled with effects from abilities and we were confused. Multiply the number of players by five times and I can only imagine it just looks like one big clusterfuck the entire time, especially considering the few available maps are quite small.

My biggest gripe, however, is the current system for showing what abilities are ready to go just didn’t seem all that intuitive, as we both found ourselves confused what moves were ready to go while playing. There was typically at least one moment in each match we played where we would just run at each other mashing buttons till one of us found one that worked. Not really a great look.

I realize I’ve had a lot of criticisms of MageQuit but it honestly comes from a good place. I think with a lot more time in development it might turn out to be a decent little party game. As it stands now it is just too early and rough around the edges to suggest anyone buy. I certainly never thought I’d want a game that combines the frantic hilarity of most party games with a MOBA, but now I’m hoping a great one gets made; if not MageQuit, then another one.

Worth Your Money: Maybe Later

[A copy of the game was provided by the developer or publisher for the purpose of this review.]

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